ces of a
cloth-of-silver robe with short, stiffly wired-out skirt. She was
seated, an idol, on a glittering black throne, at her feet with
their tapering dyed nails a fantastically attired throng of
worshipers.

The idol stirred into life, the music of the orchestra died away.
Then a tom-tom began to beat its nervous pulse-stirring throb,
the strident notes of a reed-pipe joined in and the dancer,
raised on her toes on the dais, began to sway languorously to and
fro. And so she swayed and swayed with sinuously curving limbs
while the drums throbbed out faster with ever-shortening beats,
with now and then a clash of brazen cymbals that was torture to
overwrought nerves.

The dancer was the perfection of grace. Her figure was lithe and
supple as a boy's. There was a suggestion of fire and strength
and agility about her that made one think of a panther as she
postured there against a background of barbaric color. The grace
of her movements, the exquisite blending of the colors on the
stage, the skillful grouping of the throng of worshipers, made up
a picture which held the audience spellbound and in silence until
the curtain dropped.

Desmond turned to find Strangwise standing up.

"I thought of just running round behind the scenes for a few
minutes," he said carelessly.

"What, to see Nur-el-Din? By Jove, I'm coming, too!" promptly
exclaimed Desmond.

Strangwise demurred. He didn't quite know if he could take him:
there might be difficulties: another time... But Desmond got up
resolutely.

"I'll be damned if you leave me behind, Maurice," he laughed, "of
course I'm coming, too! She's the most delightful creature I've
ever set eyes on!"

And so it ended by them going through the pass-door together.

CHAPTER III. MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND

That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It
was a climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in
the music-hall code. The result was that Mr. Mackwayte, after
taking four enthusiastic "curtains," stepped off the stage into a
perfect pandemonium.

He found Fletcher, the stage manager, livid with rage, surrounded
by the greater part of the large suite with which the dancer
traveled. There was Madame's maid, a trim Frenchwoman, Madame's
business manager, a fat, voluble Italian, Madame's secretary, an
olive-skinned South American youth in an evening coat with velvet
collar, and Madame's principal male dancer in a scanty Egyptian